Archives for July 2012

Mitt Romney, a privileged white man worth a quarter of a billion dollars who has sheltered his money from taxes in Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and Switzerland, and who never misses a square meal, stooped to a new obscene low in blaming the victim on Monday by slamming the Palestinians for not being richer. Palestinian […]

CAN YOU PASS THE HEZBOLLAH QUIZ? By Jeffrey Rudolph Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shia Islamic organization, has evolved over the last three decades from a guerilla movement to the most influential political and military power in Lebanon. Given that Hezbollah is a crucial part of the Iran-led “Axis of Resistance”, it is not surprising that the […]

Photograph by Juan Cole, late May 2012. View from the Misrata War Memorial Museum, looking across the street. The Misrata revolutionaries raided Qaddafi’s compound in Tripoli and confiscated the famous sculpture of a fist grasping a US fighter jet, erected after President Ronald Reagan bombed Tripoli and Benghazi in 1986. The Qaddafi memorial falsely claimed […]

As expected, Mitt Romney in Israel tried his hardest to make casino mogul and Likud Party stalwart Sheldon Adelson happy. Adelson has pledged $100 million to Romney’s presidential campaign. Romney put all options on the table (a euphemism for illegally launching a war) with regard to Iran. But in an interview with Jim Muir of […]

The trip of Republic Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney to Israel is in bad taste for lots of reasons. 1. He is holding a fundraiser at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. It is distasteful for an American political candidate to hold a high profile fundraiser abroad, implying a commitment to a foreign country as a […]

Andreas Gursky, “Dubai World III,” Photograph, 2008. Gursky (b. Leipzig, 1955) studied at the Dusseldorf Art Academy and is known for his large scale prints and interest in world tourist sites. This photograph references the controversial “Dubai World” project started by Nakheel Properties, which built artificial islands off the United Arab Emirates, with the ensemble […]

John Wreford writes at Yourmiddleeast.com Photographer John Wreford has lived in Syria for many years and still remains in his house in Damascus’ Old City. Here, he gives a very personal account of the last couple of weeks’ events. A warm summer evening sitting in a central Damascus restaurant overlooking the city, the mountain of […]